Director Profile: Francis Fish
Francis Fish
I believe every organisation can produce outstanding results if they are brave enough to take an honest, hard look at what they need to change in order to be better. I believe every team has the capacity to learn how to be a dream team with a little bit of help to find alternative ways to work.
I am a long-time proponent of "small A" agile methods and approaches, which means a pragmatic team- and results-focused approach to improvement drawing on lean thinking rather than mechanically following a recipe that may not be appropriate.
I have been working in Information Technology since 1985 in a number of industries, for several blue chip and consultancy companies including KPMG, Price Waterhouse, GEC, and Oracle Corporation. I am an experienced team leader and mentor, seeing through the full project life cycle from first touch to implementation.
My consultancy company Lean Teams (http://lean-teams.co.uk) mentors teams from those just getting started with Scrum or XP up to the adoption of a full Kanban system and runs immersive training courses to help with Lean and Agile adoption.
Publications
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Unicorns in the Mist , a book exploring a pragmatic take on lean and agile ideas, and how to make them work for you.
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The single defining factor , a short work on how to find your constancy of purpose and why it ’ s important.
Conferences
I was the founder of the very successful Manchester Agile Rails Conference in 2011.
In 2012 I ran two startup weekends at DoES Liverpool using the Lean Startup template to enable entrepreneurs to gain a good understanding of the Lean Build/Measure/Learn principles to test their ideas against the potential market before committing themselves to a particular business model.
In 2013 I spoke at Lean Agile Scotland on the subject Lean isn't lean , a polemical talk about the mis-use of the lean standard work concept.
At Agile Cambridge 2013, my talk was It's not your fault on why targets don't work. This talk is available on Infoq http://www.infoq.com/presentations/targets-systems-thinking .
All of the video content can be found on my company website http://lean-teams.co.uk/presentations.
Core competencies
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People skills |
Industries |
Technical capabilities |
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Understanding business needs Problem Solving and Analysis Project Estimating and Management Performance Management Recruiting Giving training and mentoring Good Communicator Team Leader Qualified level 3 kayak coach |
Online travel agent Online gaming back end services Legal claims management Financial Services Linear Asset Management Pharmaceuticals Publishing Marketing Health care Telecommunications Discrete Manufacturing Internet Banking Technical Pre-Sales |
Lean Kanban Scrum Behaviour-driven development Test-driven development Agile methods Kanban Web development and Architecture Database Design Mobile app development |
Recent Employment History
Note: the roles at the beginning of this table overlap because they represent complimentary work streams and consultancy products.
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February 2012 - Now Lean Teams Principal Owner of independent consultancy and training company.
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February 2012 - Now Pharmarketeer Director Web development
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February 2012 - Now Cuprium CIC Technical Director
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November 2011 - Feb 2012 Incutio Development Leader
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February 2010 - November 2011 Online Travel Agency Manchester Agile XP Coach Mentoring and working with developers from our Ruby Academy with Scrum and Agile. Using RSpec and Cucumber plus helping them understand the Rails and Active Record idioms needed to be productive. Pair programming to learn and pass on expertise. Working closely with the business to create user stories and estimate the work. The projects are listed below:
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August 2009 - February 2010 Gala Coral Plc Woking System review and TDD training and implementation
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Education 1983 - 1986 Liverpool Polytechnic
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